I’m so sick of this kind of bullshit. David Letterman is NOT going to be fired over this. Period. It was a bad joke. He apologized (even though he didn’t need to). End of story. The pathetic fucks who have nothing better to do than protest outside his studio are just making bigger fools of themselves than the teabaggers did.

oh man. I do think Letterman is a sexist jerk, but the Palins have no credibility on the topic, and these ridiculous protesters are going to make it harder for us who do think it’s necessary to call people out on their creepy sexism. But it’s about credibility, which depends often on an APPROPRIATE RESPONSE, depending on the situation. If this is how right wingers act, no wonder they think feminists make mountains out of molehills and are whiny, etc.

BECAUSE WHEN THEY DO IT, THEY DO IT WRONG! It’s all pure projection.

depressing. again, this crap is going to make it so much harder for us in the long run.

and for the record, I think it’s sexist and creepy no matter which daughter was the target. Making sexual jokes about a teenager (both are teenagers) is not the same thing as calling Bristol out on her hypocrisy, which I agree is fair game.

But again, measured, appropriate responses, people! This is sooo stupid.

The pathetic fucks who have nothing better to do than protest outside his studioare just making bigger fools of themselves than the teabaggers did.

Are you talking about all 17 of them?

Because if you are talking about protestor #12, you sir, should be ashamed.  She’s just a 12 year old girl, after all.  Pervert.

/snark

I’m so sick of this kind of bullshit. David Letterman is NOT going to be fired over this. Period. It was a bad joke. He apologized (even though he didn’t need to). End of story.

Exactly.  The size of the trophy is the relevant information, not what he did to excuse this.

I can’t tell you how thrilled I’d be if wingnuts actually DID care this much about pedophilia—>so much that a joke about an 18 y/o, made without ever being in the same room, made you a sex offender and a pedophile, as the sign above reads.

There’d be no cover or apologizing for the Catholic Church—wingnuts would be tar-n-feathering them while lefties argued for mental health or just prison time.

Bill O’Reilly would be fired for suggesting that Jennifer Moore was asking for it, if he hadn’t already lost his audience over paying shush money for sexually harrassing Andrea Mackris.

Rush’s trips to the Dominican Republic with suitcases packed with Viagra would have been the end of him.

Of course, actually caring about sexism, misogyny, or pedophilia has nothing to do with the protests.  They laughed at the joke, then they got huffy b/c it was about Palin, and then they decided “Hey, don’t the evul librals usually whine about this stuff?  Let’s use it against them!  They won’t be able to defend Letterman if we use their philosophy against them.”  Of course, since they don’t really understand the problem with sexism, misogyny, or pedophilia (hey, if the father gives his permission, what’s the problem?) they’re wrong about us evul liberals not telling them to shut up.

Palin loves it.  She’s in the media as a Poor Victim of the Evil Liberal MSM.  It can only help her with her Base.  Facts, such as Dave has a big contract or he’s not a pedophile, only get in the way.

“Bristol Palin is an adult woman now, and more to the point, she’s an adult woman who is putting herself out there as a public advocate for abstinence.”

When you enlist in the culture wars, don’t be surprised when you start taking enemy fire. 

And 100% agreed about the trophy hunting bit.  Anyone who can’t decipher that it was a joke about Bristol (as oppose to an accidental expression of Letterman’s thirst for 14 year old flesh) wouldn’t be smart enough to find the studio to protest.  On the “idiots or liars?” continuum, these fools fall heavily on the liars pole.

As I understand it, Letterman has now formally apologized, and Palin has now formally accepted it. That pretty much ends this episode.

That said, Palin’s stock is now sky high. She got America’s foremost comedian to essentially grovel at her well heeled feet. She is a mega-babe, and most likely our next president. After The One gets done ruining the economy, driving health care into the ground, wrecking GM and Chrysler, and pulling a Neville Chamberlain in Iran, Palin will be primed to take over in 2012.

I do think Letterman is a sexist jerk

Compared to?  Someone else who deserves their job because they aren’t the trendy topic?  The only thing that keeps Tina Fey from writing a similar joke with a similar target is that it was a bad joke.  But I wouldn’t be shocked if she got away with a far sharper version that hit the bullseye.  Stephen Colbert has popped off some good ones that hit the bullseye, like the one I quoted on the podcast this week.

This isn’t going away any time soon.  Right wingers are going to continue to lay traps to lure liberals into supporting their latest sadistic campaign, and sadly, some are going to fall for it on the grounds that they don’t want to be the last person wrapping themselves in a self-righteous glow of condemnation.  The joke, if had been about Bristol, was objectionable mostly because it was nonsensical.

How many of these stupid fucks even watch David Letterman or saw the joke in context?  I’ll wager none did and they are there under marching orders from one idiot or another on FOX News.  I assumed Letterman was talking about Bristol.  Anyone with half a brain knew he was talking about the knocked up older sister.  I thought it was just a stupid joke until Todd Palin started ranting about raping 14 year old girls and then I thought WTF?  That was quite a leap of logic there, Todd.

Now I am amused.  As a feminist, I get pissed off and offended just about every time I watch TV because of the sexist, misogynistic crap.  Welcome to our world, wingnuts.

I guess it was too much to hope that Palin would just crawl back under her glacier and leave us all alone.

I want to make it clear that I’m not trying to jump all over you, liviaclaudia.  The problem is that we’re buying into the conservative frame—-where those of us who don’t make the effort to point out that the joke is stupid, or even go out of our way to condemn it in the most lavish terms are considered guilty of the worst kind of pedophile-coddling—-and our eagerness not to be tarred makes us jump when they say jump, instead of admit that the joke’s biggest crime was incoherence, and if that’s gonna get you fired from a late night talk show, then no one would hold a job doing that.  Their monologues are full of incoherent half-jokes that stab in the right direction but miss the bullseye.

I’d go a little further in the “wingnuts don’t care about pedophilia” direction. Ephebophilia, actually (lust after the unformed adolescent) is one of the defining characteristics of many wingnuts’ attitudes toward women (remember that whole “past your sell-by date at 20” thing?). And it’s their tacit approval of their patriarchs’ attitudes and actions toward girls and young women that leads them to freak out so severely when someone who isn’t one of theirs does something that could be construed as trespassing on the same territory. (That meaning wasn’t double when I wrote it, but it sure is on rereading…)

Now I am amused.  As a feminist, I get pissed off and offended just about every time I watch TV because of the sexist, misogynistic crap.

Bad Kitty, you said it better.  On the scale of shit that’s actually sexist and offensive, that’s a 1, because at least it stabs in the direction of someone who is full of shit about being full of shit.  (In this case, claiming not to be sexual while being sexual in order to bully other women into pretending not to be sexual.)  Sure, it relies on slut-shaming tropes that the Palins themselves support, but that’s every 3rd joke on TV.

“That said, Palin’s stock is now sky high. She got America’s foremost comedian to essentially grovel at her well heeled feet. She is a mega-babe, and most likely our next president.”

...whatever you’re smoking, EricJG, you gotta share with the rest of us…

“After The One gets done ruining the economy, driving health care into the ground, wrecking GM and Chrysler, and pulling a Neville Chamberlain in Iran, Palin will be primed to take over in 2012.”

...but this demonstrates exactly why consuming controlled substances can be so dangerous.  I guess it’s nice to know just how disconnected you are from reality…

While I’m certainly not disagreeing that “the well-established wingnut need for some regular blood-letting” is playing a huge role in this, I think a good portion of the wingnuts really do feel like this is about sexism. They just have a really sexist definition of what constitutes sexism. I finished reading “The Purity Myth” and then about a week later this story broke, and I think that this right here is a perfect example of what it was talking about.

Personally I found Letterman’s joke abhorrent on several different levels, perhaps the least of which being that the entire Palin clan sucks at life SO HARD that there’s *no reason on Earth* someone should have to resort to “she had sex, she’s a slut, LOL” to make fun of them, and his non-apology (“Sorry, I meant the slutty daughter!”) to be about on par with the “Sorry, I meant to send my racist emails to a different list!” non-apologies coming from however many Republican goons we’re up to now. And I could, theoretically, totally get behind the notion of firing him if people were attempting to get everyone who slut-shames in the mainstream media fired, because I would fucking LOVE a world without the mainstream media in it.

But that, of course, is not what’s going on in their little wingnut minds… it’s not misogynistic because calling women sluts is misogynistic; it’s misogynistic because Bristol Palin is one of the “good” women (yeah, she had sex, but she got properly punished with a baby and repented* and everything!), and it’s misogynistic to call the “good” women sluts. Because they’re not sluts. Totally not misogynistic to call all the actually slutty women sluts though, ‘cos they are. Which is why they are ~surprised~ and outraged at this, because they think it is somehow different than what happens all the rest of the time.

So the basis of the conflict is a disagreement over which side of the virgin/whore dichotomy Bristol Palin is on. I have approximately zero sympathy for anyone who actually picked a side. If we’re going to disparage her worth as a human being, we should do so because she’s a dumbass.

*I’m assuming this is what her abstinence-only stint is about, which is why I’m a little confused when people call her a hypocrite over it. I haven’t done a substantial amount of research into what exactly she’s “teaching”, and if it’s all “purity” shit then I guess it’s hypocritical, but what little I have heard about it makes it sound more like she’s setting herself up as having a cautionary tale to tell. Which I think is totally misguided, but makes sense—if I’d had to go through a teen pregnancy-and-almost-marriage-I-didn’t-actually-want drama on the public political stage, I’d be regretting it pretty hard too.

I guess it was too much to hope that Palin would just crawl back under her glacier and leave us all alone.
liviaclaudia on 06/17 at 07:08 PM

See, I told you global warming was a problem; that glacier is melting and look what was uncovered.  Euuuw!  a Sarah Palin

It really bugs me when sexual desire toward teenagers is characterized as pedophilia.  Not that I think it’s in any way acceptable for adults to sexually objectify or exploit teenagers, but I still think “pedophilia” is too strong a word.  Sexually objectifying a 14 year old is not the same thing as sexually objectifying a 4 year old.  In this case, and many others, “pedophile” is just getting thrown in here to stir shit up, since, of course, pedophiles are the most hated people on the face of the planet.

pederasty is the correct term for those past puberty (teenagers) - pre-puberty=pedophilia

but what little I have heard about it makes it sound more like she’s setting herself up as having a cautionary tale to tell.

That’s not quite what she’s doing, though I think that might seem like the cursory excuse.  Most of her interviews have been about how great it is to be a teenage mom, how she’s a real grown-up who’s left childish things behind (what every teenager wants), how she wouldn’t change it for the world—-and by the way girls, don’t do it.  *wink wink*  It’s fucked up.

pederasty is the correct term for those past puberty (teenagers) - pre-puberty=pedophilia

It’s more specific than that:  pederasty is about relationships between adult men and adolescent boys. 

And really, I’m amazed that treating Bristol Palin as a sexual being can be constructed as the mark of some derangement.  She’s 18 for crissakes, a legal adult!  It’s worth pointing out that a lot of jokes at her expense are mean-spirited, but that’s a far, far cry from pedophilia.

That said, Palin’s stock is now sky high. She got America’s foremost comedian to essentially grovel at her well heeled feet. She is a mega-babe, and most likely our next president

Yeah, see, I would take the wingnuts’ sudden concern with misogyny a lot more seriously if every discussion of Palin did not inevitably include that one of her primary qualifications is that they would like to bang her.

That said, Palin’s stock is now sky high. She got America’s foremost comedian to essentially grovel at her well heeled feet. She is a mega-babe, and most likely our next president

I umm.. well… uh… dude…

Sorry, but…

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OK, you can put the crackpipe down now.

But please, pretty please… push your <strike>Nazi</strike> Republican Party pals to nominate her in 2012.  The entire Democratic Party will be ever so grateful for a guaranteed landslide.

That’s not quite what she’s doing, though I think that might seem like the cursory excuse.  Most of her interviews have been about how great it is to be a teenage mom, how she’s a real grown-up who’s left childish things behind (what every teenager wants), how she wouldn’t change it for the world—-and by the way girls, don’t do it.  *wink wink* It’s fucked up.

Not only that but if you watch Bristol’s first post-baby interview she is clearly very unhappy and says how she wishes she’d never been pregnant and this whole thing is very hard.  Then they bring in her mother who insists Bristol is a wonderful mother who loves her baby so much and that was the end of any discussion of how teenage pregnancy is an enormous clusterfuck.

EricJG, I am not being at all facetious or even attempting to be insulting when I honestly suggest that you seek help.

Where were these people when their hero and earless leader Rush Limbaugh was calling a then 13-year old Chelsea Clinton “the White House Dog”?

I thought so.

AND Limbaugh is far more easily called a pedophile after borrowing Viagara and visiting brothels with underage prostitutes.

I think that this is the wingnut’s “feminist” version of “but I have a black friend”.

Yeah, after that first interview, Bristol’s narrative has changed.  She minimizes the sacrifices.  Her education, social life, dating prospects, etc. aren’t mentioned as sacrifices, but she’ll say that she has to sleep in less and she doesn’t go out to the movies as much.  Then she talks about how great it’s been otherwise.

It’s clear that the “abstinence-only” message is a pro-teenage pregnancy one.  The only way this would be better for wingnuts is if Bristol actually married, and then they’d be even more explicit about it.  But Sarah Palin clearly doesn’t feel like she can win the base without championing the joys of having babies instead of going to college for women.  With that in mind, I don’t like feminists being bullied into enforcing silence about this reality. The mushy middle should be thinking about how fucked up the pro-teenage pregnancy message is, not unaware because we’ve been bullied into silence.

Remind me when they fired John “women peak at 16” Derbyshire again?

Remind me when they fired John “women peak at 16” Derbyshire again?

Right before they hired John “women peak at 15” Derbyshire. 

I can’t prove it, but I think the reason they’re getting traction with the base on this one is not that it’s Bristol/Willow, but that the other participant is Alex Rodriguez.  Who’s a little less lily white than Levi Johnston.

It seems obvious to me that the outrage of the right over Letterman’s comments were faked.  They didn’t get that upset over the pedophile ring in the Reagan/Bush White House.  Pedophilia is okay if it’s Catholic priests doing it, or operatives in a Republican administration, but even the hint of it coming from a late night comic, no matter how hard one has to twist the actual words and meaning of what he said, is so horrible that the said comic should be fired.  Please.  The actions of the right just get more and more desperate.  There is nothing these people will not stoop to, even using their children for public pissing contests.

Amanda has nailed the reason for their behavior.  They want to bring down a powerful voice that they perceive as liberal.  Only the insane would have gotten a statement about pedophilia or statutory rape from the joke. 

Republican and conservative hypocrisy knows no bounds though. 

Check this out:  http://www.listal.com/video/100861910

What, there were like 15 protestors there? Doesn’t fucking Fred Phelps pull more than that?

Also I wouldn’t judge Bristol except to say that she seems like she knows a career opportunity when she sees one.

AND Limbaugh is far more easily called a pedophile after borrowing Viagara and visiting brothels with underage prostitutes.

Be fair.  That’s speculation, without evidence.

She is a mega-babe, and most likely our next president. After The One gets done ruining the economy, driving health care into the ground, wrecking GM and Chrysler, and pulling a Neville Chamberlain in Iran, Palin will be primed to take over in 2012.

Sticks are smarter than this.

after borrowing Viagara

That is a proven fact, the other, not so much, except by inference.

Not only that but if you watch Bristol’s first post-baby interview she is clearly very unhappy and says how she wishes she’d never been pregnant and this whole thing is very hard.  Then they bring in her mother who insists Bristol is a wonderful mother who loves her baby so much and that was the end of any discussion of how teenage pregnancy is an enormous clusterfuck.

Wow, that sounds like a Katie Holmes interview.  I’m glad I missed that.  I can’t stomach watching Palin.  I caught her for two seconds on Lauer the other morning and she had on her “in what respect charlie” face.  It kind of surprises me that no one ever really mentions what a nasty woman she is.  Sure, I get that everyone is distracted by the mind-blowing incoherence and disconnected yammering, but the fact that she is just one nasty sneering person shouldn’t be overlooked.

okay ... being fair, it was Limbaugh who was caught with viagara that he wasn’t prescribed while returning from a vacation at a resort area known for underage brothels.

A bit more of a link than a kludgy stupid joke about a guy who is better known for MILF hunting.

“but that the other participant is Alex Rodriguez.  Who’s a little less lily white than Levi Johnston. “

Ha, I never thought of that.  They do have an inordinate fear of a white woman fucking a non-white male.  I have always marveled over this, and I’m convinced it’s because they all believe the stereotype of the giant black penis and are terrified that they’ll come up short by comparison.

And you know, most of them probably would.  In less you think a bunch of guys with decent sized penises are running around clutching their pearls over some white girl fucking A-rod, and let’s face it, who wouldn’t?

I think there is a direct correlation between the degree of unhingement and the number of “extra” little things scribbled in on a single sign, regardless of the political orientation of the sign holder.

“The mushy middle should be thinking about how fucked up the pro-teenage pregnancy message is, not unaware because we’ve been bullied into silence. “

Oh yeah.  And it’s all over tv too.  I know it’s in a lot of soap operas because i see the coming attractions while satisfying my mortifying 90210 rerun addiction.  And I tuned into the new 90210 to see what happened to kelly and brenda ( i know, it’s beyond pathetic what can i say), and what do i see but another pregnant high school student.  I have been thinking about that a lot.  They wouldn’t dare show a character choosing to get an abortion.  Actually on the daytime soaps maybe they do, I should check into that.  But on primetime network tv?  Has there been one since Maude?  I even remember seeing a rerun of Roseanne where she thought she was pregnant, and at least there they brought it up, but her insipid blonde friend said “some say that’s murder”, and her sister said “some say it’s not” and Rosane said “and some say it’s a choice”.  And then she wasn’t pregnant.  If even Roseanne couldn’t do an abortion in prime time, who is going to do it?

LOL @ Ms. Kate!  Yeah there probably is!

Since when does not wanting children mean fearing them?  My son’s teacher is childfree.

Letterman may well be an asshole (actually, he is) but this joke wasn’t even close to out of line. One of the earlier links on this subject on this blog was to a newspaper article—and one of the commentators there had a long list of comedians who had made Palin + Pregnancy cracks. Some of which Palin actually responded to in good humor. This. Is. A. Completely. Empty. Protest. It’s bullshit. There is NOTHING behind it save for right wing tribalism.

If you think that Letterman was out of line, please point out a set of comedians that draw the line at female sexuality—with the caveat that they have to be successful enough to actually make it on television. I’ll wait.

thecynicalromantic  on  06/17  at  07:25 PM
If we’re going to disparage her worth as a human being, we should do so because she’s a dumbass.

Bullshit. We disparage her worth as a human being because she and her clan play by different rules than we do. We’re sluts when we get knocked up and she and hers are good Christians when they have their babies. She’s not a dumbass; that’s simply wrong. There’s no evidence that any of the Palins are more than intelectually lazy. (Sarah Palin’s egregiously stupid statements are in line with those of G.W.’s: the result of just not giving a shit, knowing you’ll never be called on to ever say anything substantive.)

I’m assuming this is what her abstinence-only stint is about, which is why I’m a little confused when people call her a hypocrite over it. I haven’t done a substantial amount of research into what exactly she’s “teaching”, and if it’s all “purity” shit then I guess it’s hypocritical. . .

Yeah, well, let us enlighten you: Palin et. al. represent an immoral double standard vis-a-vis women and sexuality that boils down to “it’s evil when you do what we do, but it’s good when we do it.” So, yeah, hypocritical is a word that comes to mind.

See also: Ms. Kate  at  08:11 PM, above.

Wow, that sounds like a Katie Holmes interview.

It was really sad, because Bristol loves Tripp, but she wished he’d been born 10 years later…

then Sarah bursts in and babbles about how Tripp’s going to be just fine…when the interview was abougt BRISTOL and how BRISTOL is.  Bristol is invisible now that the magical baybee has left her womb.  Bristol did her duty and bore the child, who cares what she does now, what her dreams are, what her aspiratinos are—especially her own mother?

Now Bristol just parrots whatever abstinence shit will keep her Mommy happy and keep her living in that big house.

—-
Caton, I watched “All My Children” for about 3 decades.  They were the first to have a character with AIDS (got it from her drug addict husband, so they avoided teh gay, but still…).  Erica Kane used birth control secretly, hiding it from her devoutly Catholic football star husband.  She also had an abortion in order to continue her budding modelling career.

That was then.

NOW?  I didn’t watch, but was told that Erica’s “abortion” was secretly fixed so that an obsessed OB stole the baby and raised him as his own.  Yep.  Abortion baby LIVES! and no one on American TV, day or night, or in the movies ever has an abortion.

Is it any wonder that Tiller was murdered?  Americans can’t even have pretend abortions or discuss the benefits of having pretend abortions.

I see over-reacting.  An over-reacting that reminds me David Horowitz was a leftist before he became a wing-nut.  And while a lot of people felt he, somehow, changed when he went from socialist to wing-nut.  I disagree, I think it’s obvious that his underlying issues and personality have been very consistent…

As Nietzsche said:  Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

let us not forget that Letterman was the one who exposed McCain as a liar when he supposedly suspended his campaign over the economy. it was pretty much that point in time when the McCain campaign became officially DOA.

Letterman isn’t just any late night talk show host, he’s the one who helped lose the election for the right. this isn’t about Bristol or any other Palin, this is about revenge. wingnuts are obsessive, like the elephant, they don’t forget.

The only one who would get affected if David Letterman got fired is Jimmy Kimmel, who would probably just move his show to a later time and get more raunchy anyhow.

Letterman isn’t just any late night talk show host, he’s the one who helped lose the election for the right. this isn’t about Bristol or any other Palin, this is about revenge. wingnuts are obsessive, like the elephant, they don’t forget.

But the wingnuts know deep in their hearts that McCain wasn’t a REAL ReaGonservative and THAT’S why he lost, and if only they REAGAN REAGAN REAGAN they’ll win in a landslide REAGAN.

Attraction to adolescents is actually called “ephebophilia” or “hebephilia”. Pedophilia is exclusively pre-pubescent children. But again, these people aren’t exactly readers.

Sure, I get that everyone is distracted by the mind-blowing incoherence and disconnected yammering, but the fact that she is just one nasty sneering person shouldn’t be overlooked.
Caton on 06/17 at 09:15 PM

This.  + snarky, sniping, and vengeful.

I stand corrected on the hypocrisy of the abstinence thing. I’d only heard one story on it, which I guess was the early one.

I still maintain that they’re pretty damn stupid. There are multiple ways of being stupid, and just because they manage to be intelligent enough to know how to play people doesn’t mean that double standards and hypocrisy aren’t failures of logic on a basic reality-recognizing level of getting one’s brain around the simple notions that “me=human” and “other humans=human.” And, frankly, being potentially smart enough to not make oneself a national laughingstock but being too “intellectually lazy” to do so, especially when you’re trying to run for something, doesn’t fall into the “not a dumbass move” category either.

I don’t think Sarah Palin is necessarily stupid. She is clearly intellectually lazy, rather ignorant of an astonishing amount of things reasonably educated people take as common knowledge, but is reassured by her absolute certainty in her own righteousness.

That’s what you see on the screen as she responds to an interviewer (Matt Lauer?) about this nonsense, and it is obvious she is struggling to control herself to avoid snickering her way through her preposterous, implied assertions that David Letterman is a child molester. It was a disgusting display, and par for her course.

I’ve watched Letterman basically my whole life, so I don’t get where the “sexist asshole” accusations are coming from.  Letterman always seemed like a fairly nice guy who told jokes that sometimes veered into the category of sexism, but genuinely seemed to be on “our side” all things considered.  I don’t think I’m wrong.  I wonder how many of the “David Letterman sucks” comments are from people who don’t actually watch his show regularly, like how people who ate at Olive Garden once 10 years ago like to say, “Chain restaurants are horrible!” 

Also, I realize that David Letterman is in charge of his program and gets the final say in what goes on his program, but are we all forgetting that these jokes are usually written by a TEAM of writers?  It’s entirely possible that he read the joke but didn’t even write it.  Which doesn’t mean he’s not responsible for it (and certainly he’s taken responsibility for it), but hey, maybe they should be channeling their faux rage and pointing their pedophingers at some other guy, not Letterman.  It’s difficult to know.

(AND ... honestly, is “slutty flight attendant” really necessarily insulting to flight attendants?  We’ve seen Halloween costumes.  You can have a slutty version of just about anything.)

Letterman is the target because getting him would be a real trophy for the mantle, right up there with Dan Rather.

When you enlist in the culture wars, don’t be surprised when you start taking enemy fire…and 100% agreed about the trophy hunting bit.

Righties love to moan about ‘moral equivalency’, but they engage in a very crude form of it: they have this idea that whenever a public figure with whom they identify goes down or takes a hit, a public figure with whom they do not identify must also go down or must take an equivalent hit.  Case in point: some years ago Newt Gingrich (due mostly to his own ineptitude and carelessness) had to resign his position as Speaker of the House; well, the righties at that moment conceived the idea that the Left “owed” them a Speaker: it was this feeling which fueled much of the recent hostility aimed at Nancy Pelosi.  Likewise, from time to time right-wing media figures get fired or suffer a loss in credibility or popularity: whenever this happens at least a few of their fans contract the notion that an equivalent firing or demotion has to be inflicted on a left/center media figure (or upon what they think is a left/center media figure) in compensation.*  (Sometimes rightie B, C, and D-listers will take up the cudgels in their own defense, or in what they think is their own defense, which is the case with John Zigler, who is emceeing the anti-Letterman protests.)

The problem is that this kind of equivalency is a false equivalency.  Remember how righties are always insisting that we must never confuse Palestinians with Israelis or Persians with Arabs** because that’s a false equivalency?  This tit-for-tat of theirs is the real thing.  No ouster of Nancy Pelosi’s could “pay” for Gingrich’s disgrace because Pelosi is, all ‘round, a more useful person and a less corrupt politician than Gingrich.  He, in other words, is much more replaceable than she is; he’d never have been resurrected from political limbo if the Republican party hadn’t spent the last 30 years divesting itself of every last scrap of its talent.  David Letterman’s case is not comparable to Imus’s or Zigler’s for many reasons, of which the chiefest is that David Letterman is more successful and more talented than either one of them could ever hope to be.  No, he’s not going down; he’s a big fish in a big pond where the Ziglers and Imuses are smaller fish in smaller ponds (and where their followers don’t even make the grade to that extent).  Righties are believers in hierarchy and they ought to be able to recognize that there are times when these sorts of differences jump into high relief, but for some reason this is a realization which escapes them.

*One of the anti-Letterman protesters was heard to say: “Hey, they fired Imus, didn’t they?” or words to that effect.

**Unless the Persians are threatening Israel or unless it’s thought advisable to let the American public suppose that they are.

(Sometimes rightie B, C, and D-listers will take up the cudgels in their own defense, or in what they think is their own defense, which is the case with John Zigler, who is emceeing the anti-Letterman protests.)

Ziegler?

Fuck I hate that guy.  I watched Contessa Brewer (who isn’t particularly left) cut his microphone off the other day on MSNBC because he was being such a whining fucknozzle.

That’s the asshole that made that craptastic whiny piece of shit documentary “How Obama Got Elected” that was the most snivelling pile of dung ever produced.

Fuck him.

I love The Onion’s ‘American Voices’ take on this: Letterman should have waited a couple of weeks to make sure she was really knocked up.

http://www.theonion.com/content/amvo/letterman_apologizes_to_palin

(AND ... honestly, is “slutty flight attendant” really necessarily insulting to flight attendants?  We’ve seen Halloween costumes.  You can have a slutty version of just about anything.)

Your challnge for this Halloween - “slutty Cthulhu”.  Go for it.

What is that right-winger response to any sort of protest on the left?  What is it they always yell at people who are protesting war, or injustice, or poverty, or sexism, or racism?  What is that little phrase they use to demean and belittle anyone who takes their progressive beliefs seriously enough to get out there with a sign and protest, no matter how serious the cause or provocation?  What are those words I’ve heard, implying that anyone who would or could attend a protest is obviously a parasite, sucking the blood of decent, hardworking Americans? 

Oh, yeah!  Now I remember!

GET A JOB!

(I’d really love to have yelled that at these people!  Especially during the recession created by their heroic ex-president!)

the other participant is Alex Rodriguez.  Who’s a little less lily white than Levi Johnston.

I think that the Alex Rodriguez part of the joke has been almost entirely overlooked, but not for that reason—last year there was a whole media circus about Rodriguez cheating on his wife.  I think the basic structure of the joke is that Sarah Palin is such an inattentive parent that she’d be oblivious to a notorious horndog hooking up with her daughter.  In fact, the joke is funnier the less you think of it as aimed at any specific Palin daughter. 

I said on Alicublog that it’s more like a “Your Mama” joke, in that the person telling the joke isn’t necessarily saying anything about your actual mother, just finding a way to say something rude about you.  It’s also a bit like a “farmer’s daughter” joke.  Laughing at this joke is primarily laughing at Sarah Palin and, secondarily, especially in New York, Alex Rodriguez—it’s collaterally at Sarah Palin’s _actual_ daughter.  But maybe that’s bad enough.

As for slut-shaming, I don’t think that when the Bristol Palin melodrama was freshly in the news the primary reaction was that Bristol had done something wrong or stupid; it was that Sarah Palin had a lot of nerve expounding on conservative values when her own family was a showcase of exactly the kind of thing her party would decry in anyone else’s private life.

Still, I think the joke is the kind of thing that people should know is going to make people upset for a number of reasons, and when you know that, I think you need to be _really sure_ it’s going to be worth the ensuing shitstorm, and I don’t think this was worth it for either comic or political reasons.

(The protesters are a whole different story.  There I think they’re thinking of the Don Imus situation—bekabot made the connection earlier—and wanting to make a point that media figures who say something that offends black people get fired, but media figures who say something that offends Republicans/Christians/white people don’t, and that shows the liberal-media-PC Axis of Evil at work.)

And we’ve gone Cthulu again!

Slutty Cthulu is new…gotta give Pandagonians that.  We may hit the same themes over and over, but we find innovative ways to bring them up.  I’m thinking of crossing a French maid outfit with the Davy Jones/octopus face mask from Pirates of the Carribean.  Pull off the pirate hat.  Glue on a couple dozen more googly eyes…C’thulhu fhtagn trick or treat!

The Olive Garden still sucks, but I do like Dave, when he’s not being a pig.  He was my weatherman when i was a kid before he was fired for comparing hail to the size of babies. 

I don’t know if he’s empirically funny.  I remember thinking Johnny Carson’s gags were just too old, and I figure Dave and I are just aging along together, so I’ll always tend to find him amusing…like a funny uncle or something.

Homophobe: Since when does not wanting gay marriage mean fearing them?

Since it means denying civil rights to someone b/c of their sexual orientation, as opposed to simply refusing to procreate which doesn’t deny the right to procreate to anyone else.

No reason—short of religious bigotry or fear of teh gay—explains the reaction to gay marriage.

If you think that Letterman was out of line, please point out a set of comedians that draw the line at female sexuality—with the caveat that they have to be successful enough to actually make it on television. I’ll wait.

Hey, did I miss the memo that I can’t legitimately believe something if most of America doesn’t believe it with me?  Because I guess that means I need to throw out my atheism and feminism cards, huh?  Not to mention the whole not hating gay people thing. 

I do think the joke was out of line, and I hardly ever watch stand up comedy because too frequently the real zingers are about how women are super confusing money stealing aliens or slutty mc slut sluts.  Or, depending on whether you’re watching cable or not, it’ll be about how they got married and all of a sudden they stopped getting blow jobs, and hey, why can’t I call that black guy a you-know-what when he himself uses that word?  So no, I can’t give you a list of said comedians because I am unconvinced that they actually exist, and if they do, I don’t have the energy to find them out.

Personally, I don’t think that we should happily call Bristol Palin a slut because she espouses a double standard.  I don’t think it should be kosher to call any woman a slut regardless of how despicable she is otherwise.  And as for the subject of her hypocrisy, I would like to remind everyone that she is a very young woman forced to endure public scrutiny of her teenage slutty mcslutness because of her high profile mother.  I don’t believe for an instant that she hasn’t been controlled and manipulated by her parents through this whole thing, and considering that she is dependent on them I’m not surprised that she is going along with it with apparent gusto.

I feel sorry for Bristol Palin.  No one should have to endure what she has.  And I don’t particularly care if this is buying into some right wing frame, because no fucking way is Letterman ever going to be fired over the joke, not until every stand up comedian on TV gets fired because I’m sure they are all worse.

...and the Cthulhu Halloween Costume has already been done.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3307/3451372442_7729c75b4e.jpg?v=0

I think that the Alex Rodriguez part of the joke has been almost entirely overlooked, but not for that reason—last year there was a whole media circus about Rodriguez cheating on his wife.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was cheating on his wife, it was who he was cheating on her with… namely, Madonna.  And there was a fair bit of speculation that Arod’s wife was cheating on him with Lenny Kravitz.  It was a whole sports-celeberazzi hoopla, and the fact that it would result in a woman divorcing a man who is worth around half a billion dollars.

I’m with Denise.

And if you read Letterman’s apology (the transcript is posted over at Shakesville, by the way), he apologies for the whole kit and caboodle.  As he should.

And having said that, it’s clear that these particular protesters (a) don’t know or care that he mistakenly made a bad joke about Bristol Palin that was made even worse by the implication that it was about Willow Palin, and (b) he has apologised fully and abjectly and that apology has been accepted by the parties in question.

...and the Cthulhu Halloween Costume has already been done.

Fuck me gently with a chainsaw - Rule 34 strikes again!

If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my bunk.

I’m not sure how I see this joke as sexist.
Alex Rodriguez was as much the butt of the joke as Bristol Palin was. It’s not like the joke made her out to look like a “slut” and him as a macho male conqueror or whatever. If anything it was a silly “meta-joke” lampooning their public images rather than an actual swipe at the people themselves.

Caren, thanks for that recap.  So at one point Ericka Kaine was living some sort of empowered life independent of her husband.  No wonder she is considered to be a “bad girl”.  And then she had an abortion that lived.  That’s got to be the weirdest thing I have heard yet.  Wow.

Not only that, she had an abortion to salvage her modelling career, yet she would have had to have been seven months pregnant (at that time in history) for that “child” to survive.

last year there was a whole media circus about Rodriguez cheating on his wife.  I think the basic structure of the joke is that Sarah Palin is such an inattentive parent that she’d be oblivious to a notorious horndog hooking up with her daughter.

Except that ARod appears to appreciate attractive, fit women who are a decade or more older than him.  It would have been far funnier if Letterman and his writers had listened to the DJs around NYC and Boston and their jokes about how Zsa Zsa Gabor better look out ...  The object of ARod’s attention, in any decent joke, would have been Palin herself.  She’s in his wheelhouse, not her daughters.

Since when does not wanting gay marriage mean fearing them?

Jim Dumber Than A Stick: Why can’t I force you to breed, or tell you who you can marry.

I don’t give a shit whether you fear gay people or not.  You aren’t allowed to let your fears of childess women or gays marrying dictate their human rights to not breed or to marry the person of their choice.

Doesn’t it really all begin and end with, “Hey, I’m protesting a joke a comedian made on a comedy show”?

Next faux outrage.

Homophobe: Since when does not wanting gay marriage mean fearing them?

When that “not wanting” is so strong that the homophobes change a state constitution to exclude a certain class of law-abiding citizen from the rights and privileges accruing to other law-abiding citizens. We generally make laws to protect the citizenry against things they can reasonably fear. Sometimes, though, there are enough bigots that laws are made to protect the citizenry against irrational, fantasy-based fears. See, for example, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, where the marriage “not wanted” was between Jews and Christians.

In other words, jumpinjim, you’re welcome to your brain-dead bigotry—just don’t try to damage national or state constitutions in its service.

jumpinjim:

Since when does not wanting children mean fearing them?  My son’s teacher is childfree.

Homophobe: Since when does not wanting gay marriage mean fearing them?

So you admit, then, that it would be crazy and hateful to try to deprive other people of the right to marry someone of the same sex as themselves, just because you *personally* have no interest in having such a marriage?

...and the Cthulhu Halloween Costume has already been done.

Fuck me gently with a chainsaw - Rule 34 strikes again!

If anyone wants me, I’ll be in my bunk.

Technical foul. That’s not a *slutty* Cthulhu costume, unless we believe that any woman costume is de facto ‘slutty’.

Am still waiting for them to apologize to Hillary Clinton for all of the nasty jokes they made about Chelsea. Maybe I should stop holding my breath…I feel faint….............

That’s not a *slutty* Cthulhu costume, unless we believe that any woman costume is de facto ‘slutty’.

Well, it is a form-fitting bodysock.  And there’s another shot where she gets to hug/be hugged by Wil Wheaton.

I guess I have a hard time with “slutty” since a sexual woman isn’t a shameful thing.

There are plenty of creepy drawings out there, though, but I just didn’t think linking to Cthulhu porn was a great idea.

Ugh.  Who would’ve thought Cthulhu porn existed?!eleventy?

So, when you gather in protest to speak against the horrors of sexism and misogyny, and wail about the cruelty of poking fun at the children of public figures, is it customary to refer to the completely uninvolved and very, very low profile wife of the target of your protest as a slut?  Or the five year old son as a bastard?

Oh, the delicious irony…

“Should we talk about his son?” one protester asked Green. “I believe his son was born out of wedlock. I believe there’s a term for that.”

“Is someone making jokes about his child?” asked another. “Especially, you know, when he had a daughter out of wedlock himself” (he didn’t; 5-year-old Harry is his only child).

“How dare he?” asked yet a third, the most offensive of all. “When he has a bastard son, and a slut for a wife” (Letterman’s wife Lasko has kept a notoriously low profile).

It should be noted that Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter Bristol gave birth to baby Tripp (out-of-wedlock) in December and broke up with the baby’s father, Levi Johnston, in March.

Other conservative talking points thrown around at the rally included, “Close the borders!” and “I only watch Fox News,” as well as the general sentiment that Jay Leno is a better host than Letterman.

Technical foul. That’s not a *slutty* Cthulhu costume, unless we believe that any woman costume is de facto ‘slutty’.

Observer bias.  I’m feeling particularly lonely tonight. Watching younger friends go through though the initial stages of romance while you’re in a dry spell will do that to you.

I have lived in the ‘sticks’ of America before, and I am guessing the real reason for the outrage is that the little 14 year old Palin is already pregnant, or has been caught having sex.

I have always felt that Leno depended a lot more on the lol your gay kind of jokes than Letterman.  They both do sexist jokes but they seem more smarmy from Jay.  YMMV of course.

jumpinjim:  “Homophobe: Since when does not wanting gay marriage mean fearing them? “

Phobia in a psychological sense doesn’t mean straight-up fear.  From http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Psychological+anxiety :

In psychoanalytic theory, a psychological defense against anxiety in which the patient displaces anxious feelings onto an external object, activity, or situation.

Although anxiety is related to fear, it is not the same thing. Fear is a direct, focused response to a specific event or object, and the person is consciously aware of it. Most people will feel fear if someone points a loaded gun at them or if they see a tornado forming on the horizon. They also will recognize that they are afraid. Anxiety, on the other hand, is often unfocused, vague, and hard to pin down to a specific cause. In this form it is called free-floating anxiety. Sometimes anxiety being experienced in the present may stem from an event or person that produced pain and fear in the past, but the anxious individual is not consciously aware of the original source of the feeling. It is anxiety’s aspect of remoteness that makes it hard for people to compare their experiences of it. Whereas most people will be fearful in physically dangerous situations, and can agree that fear is an appropriate response in the presence of danger, anxiety is often triggered by objects or events that are unique and specific to an individual. An individual might be anxious because of a unique meaning or memory being stimulated by present circumstances, not because of some immediate danger. Another individual looking at the anxious person from the outside may be truly puzzled as to the reason for the person’s anxiety.

So you can have a phobia reaction to gays without literally fearing them; any strong negative emotion that elicits anxiety will do.

Dolittle:  “I have lived in the ‘sticks’ of America before, and I am guessing the real reason for the outrage is that the little 14 year old Palin is already pregnant, or has been caught having sex.”

What’s with the sticks putdown?  Having sex at age 14 is not all that odd anywhere.

I actually kinda like this.

Letterman is known to his many fans, and they’re not going to decide he’s a horrible, awful man. They’ve seen him, night after night, week after week, month after month, year after year, and they know he’s a comedian, and they know *him*.

And these folks think they’re suddenly going to decide that “ZOMG, he’s a prevert and somdomite”?

To me, a ‘slutty Cthulhu’ costume would involve tentacles and tits.

Okay, so Tentacles and Tits is hereby the name of my new rock band.

Denise  on  06/18  at  01:38 AM
Hey, did I miss the memo that I can’t legitimately believe something if most of America doesn’t believe it with me?. . . I do think the joke was out of line, and I hardly ever watch stand up comedy because too frequently the real zingers are about how women are super confusing money stealing aliens or slutty mc slut sluts.

Completely irrelevant. The issue is whether or not Letterman was a particularly egregious example of his craft. This quoted post supports the idea that he isn’t. That’s the point. The vast majority of comedians trade in this facile bullshit. Singling Letterman out is bad faith.

Personally, I don’t think that we should happily call Bristol Palin a slut because she espouses a double standard.

No, we should call her a wretched waste of a human being, an asshole, and a piece of crap for espousing a double standard. She helps the rightwing do what the rightwing does. That makes her a bad person. Calling her a slut is an affront to our own dignity. And it’s inaccurate.

I feel sorry for Bristol Palin.  No one should have to endure what she has.

She deserves no sympathy. She helps punish unwed mothers by backing her own mothers’ play. Any and all pain she has endured doesn’t amount to a smidgen of what she helps dish out.

Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes  on  06/18  at  01:42 AM
...and the Cthulhu Halloween Costume has already been done.

. . . But it isn’t really slutty, now is it? I’m afraid we haven’t quite reached Rule 34 status.

Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes  on  06/18  at  11:26 AM
Well, it is a form-fitting bodysock.  And there’s another shot where she gets to hug/be hugged by Wil Wheaton.

Oh, yeah, Wil Wheaton. That guy just screams “erotic” no matter where he goes.

You’ll have an easier time finding Shub Niggurath porn, I’d think. Embodiment of foul fecundity, Black Goat of the Wood with A Thousand Young and all.

oldfeminist: The ‘sticks’ is not a put down. It is a southern colloquialism meaning in the country. I have many friends that are proud to be from the sticks. As for people having sex at 14. No it is not unusual for a 14 year old to have sex, but there is a difference in how teen pregnancy is handled. In the country teens do not get pregnant, they have mono for 5-6 months and then when they come back to school they have a new brother or sister. In the city teens just get pregnant.

Your challnge for this Halloween - “slutty Cthulhu”.  Go for it.

Phoenician in a time of Romans

You saw my Legend of the Overfiend costume on facebook, didn’t you?

I love that Kathy Griffin offered to make sexual jokes about the Palin infants and children for good measure when she was on Larry King.

dolittle:  “oldfeminist: The ‘sticks’ is not a put down. It is a southern colloquialism meaning in the country. I have many friends that are proud to be from the sticks. As for people having sex at 14. No it is not unusual for a 14 year old to have sex, but there is a difference in how teen pregnancy is handled. In the country teens do not get pregnant, they have mono for 5-6 months and then when they come back to school they have a new brother or sister. In the city teens just get pregnant. “

Yes, I know what the sticks are, or I wouldn’t have said “this happens everywhere.”

Teen pregnancy is apparently even higher in rural areas than in the city or suburbs.  This may be related to less available birth control options. 

You first say that the outrage is the idea that a 14 year old would be pregnant.  Now you claim that this happens, but that rural families lie about it.  This may have been true at one time, but it seems like that would be hard to manage in these days of every child getting a Social Security Number at birth.

wingnuts are obsessive, like the elephant, they don’t forget.

Now if only they were half as smart as the average elephant…

Ugh.  Who would’ve thought Cthulhu porn existed?!eleventy?

That’s Rule #34 for you…

On the whole “slutty Cthulhu” thing, I’m sure it exists. I’ve seen a little animated thing where an anthropomorphic Japanese singing program and a chibi version of her disembodied head with octopus tentacles for hair eat Cthulhu, and compared to that…

Compared to?

Who gives a shit? If he’s a sexist jerk, he’s a sexist jerk. I don’t understand the impulse to run and defend anybody the wingnuts are picking on.

Ziegler?

Fuck I hate that guy.  I watched Contessa Brewer (who isn’t particularly left) cut his microphone off the other day on MSNBC because he was being such a whining fucknozzle.

Sorry I misspelled the name (twice; yikes).  Not long ago I heard a rumor to the effect that as a kid this fellow was unlucky enough to be targeted by more than one playground bully.  Which could account for a lot, if true.

I have lived in the ‘sticks’ of America before, and I am guessing the real reason for the outrage is that the little 14 year old Palin is already pregnant, or has been caught having sex.

Very possible.  I went to school (I’m not talking about college) with girls who were pregnant and with girls who were married but it never occured to me at the time that marrying your high-school sweetheart in high school and having the Number One Son before graduation was par for the course.  (I always imagined that city slickers were more civilized, believe it or not.)  What occurs to me now is that what was unusual was not the extent to which my classmates were sexually active but the extent to which their personal stuff went unconcealed.

I am guessing the real reason for the outrage is that the little 14 year old Palin is already pregnant, or has been caught having sex

I think the real reason is that Palin smells a media circus and is trying to get at least three or four rings out of it.

Letterman is a douchebag and the “joke” wasn’t funny and made no sense.  However, that doesn’t mean that Palin isn’t a douchebag and that the entire “outrage” has had little or nothing to do with Willow and everything to do with Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah Sarah.

Sure, watch the expression on her face when discussing the subject:

Watch it on the video. Lauer says, with an awkward smile, “Can we talk about some of the other, um, ways you’ve been in the news lately? And you know about this. There’s been this feud this week with Late Show host David Letterman”—and Palin interrupts, saying (I’d say impishly), “If you must.” And she’s grinning the whole time. She grins again around 7:00 when Lauer brings up her statement that Letterman ought to stay away from Willow:

Now, I’ve said that I think Letterman went way, way over the line. I think Palin’s daughters should be off-limits with regard to this kind of thing. But I’m sorry—if I had a 14-year-old daughter and I felt she’d been, in effect, sexually assaulted with words, and you asked me about it on TV, I wouldn’t get a cat-about-to-chow-down-on-a-canary grin on my face. I wouldn’t be smiling at all. I’d be furious just thinking about it.

But that’s Palin. She knows David Letterman gave her (specifically, her career) a big fat Christmas present, and she’s smiling because she’s ready to take full advantage. She has her talking points ready. She has supportive e-mails ready to be read from her BlackBerry. She’s prepped. Her daughters largely disappear from the discussion. She’s got her ducks lined up in a row for a self-righteous lecture—and it’s a really, really good feeling.

No One Of Consequence, might I suggest anger management? I can’t stand Sarah Palin, and I think abstinence-only advocacy and “education” are utterly harmful and dishonest, but your rage against an eighteen-year-old whom I’m guessing you’ve never met is a bit off-putting.